The certification comes after months of training for military personnel to prepare them for the presence of openly gay uniformed colleagues for the first time in history, and starts the 60-day waiting period before the law is completely removed.

Under rules outlined by Congress in December, the president, defense secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were required to certify that the services are ready for the dramatic personnel change before the law could be repealed.

So what this means is the military will more than likely have openly gay people. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out though I think, personally, that this is going to be a whole bunch of nothing. I mean, this has been coming for a while now and no one in the service should be shocked that DADT is gone. The courts tossed it out though the White House has said they want the military, not the courts, to repeal the ban.

The military services have conducted extensive internal studies and about five months of training to gauge how troops would react to the change. A survey of U.S. troops last year found that some two-thirds didn’t care if the ban is lifted. Opposition to the repeal was strongest among combat troops, particularly Marines.

But again, I think this is going to be fine. The sky didn’t fall when Blacks and women joined the ranks and it didn’t rain brimstone when the Army said it was going to copy the Marines cammis. Oh wait, it did. 🙂